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Another parking scam

How's this for a sweet set-up (at least if you're a revenue-hungry city official)?

One city agency comes along and puts up temporary signs along a busy street warning all the people who live in the area not to park along that because of an ongoing road repair project. So all those drivers are forced to find other places to park for the duration.

Then another city agency comes along and puts tickets on many of those cars because they're parked on surrounding streets which are almost entirely blanketed with "No Parking" signs.

At $60 a ticket, that's a pretty nice payday for the city.

That's exactly what happened last week on Victory Boulevard in Silver Lake, where a cluster of apartment houses are home to thousands of residents. Since on-site, off-street parking is costly and limited, many of those who live in these apartments must park on Victory Boulevard, where parking is usually allowed on both sides of the street.

But the city Department of Design and Construction started a major repaving project on Victory last Monday. Area residents and other drivers have long complained about the rough surface on that stretch of Victory. And because the street is heavily used during daytime hours, the agency decided to have the work done overnight in order to minimize its impact on traffic.

But nighttime is when most are of the apartment house residents are home and park their cars near their buildings. That would obviously impede the repaving job. So the city put up temporary signs along Victory warning residents they couldn't park there as of Monday night.

The trouble is, there's nowhere else to park in the neighborhood. All of the nearby side streets are off limits and there are "No Parking Anytime" signs everywhere.

A few people who could handle the trek parked legally in spots far away from the apartment houses. But a lot of the residents, including many senior citizens reasoning that they had no choice, parked in the No Parking zones on nearby streets anyway.

And apparently, the Traffic Enforcement Agents heard there was good hunting in the area. All those residents found bright orange tickets on their windshields.

In some cases, cars whose owners didn't get the word were towed from Victory Boulevard but dropped off and left in No Parking zones. They too got tickets.

A spokesman for the city Department of Transportation, which oversees such road work, said that closing Victory to overnight parking was necessary and touted the importance of the project. He also pointed out that the community itself called for the repaving to be done.

All true, but is it at all fair for the city to keep people from parking on the only street within reasonable walking distance where they can park legally and then fine them for parking elsewhere in the neighborhood? Where else were the supposed to go?

The DOT has said it is in contact with relevant city agencies, including the Police Department and the Department of Finance about the dilemma in which this situation has put people.

And Rep. Michael McMahon and North Shore Councilman Ken Mitchell have called these agency heads to urge them to void the summonses under the circumstances.

If that happens great, but as we understand it, the unfortunate recipients of these tickets will still have to take time off and go through a lot of rigamarole at the Parking Violations Bureau in order to get out of their tickets.

It would have been a lot better if some official with common sense had decided that since Victory Boulevard was closed to overnight parking, the city should cut residents of the area some slack.

Or do common sense and a sense of fair play even enter the equation when the prospect of easy-pickin's parking-ticket revenue is out there? (Remember the deliberately sown confusion over where people could legally park in the St. George municipal parking lot? How about the TEAs hanging out waiting to pounce on soon-to-expire meters at the borough's parking-intensive areas?)

Which brings us to the salient question: Who thought it was a good idea to flood the streets in back of Victory Boulevard with Traffic Enforcement Agents so they could issue a lot of summonses to people who had no choice?

If a private enterprise conducted a scam like this, the city Department of Consumer Affairs would be all over it. But who cracks down when the city itself, infallible in all such matters, is the scam artist?